Page 18 of Beautiful Savage
The back hallway stretches ahead. My footsteps echo off concrete walls that smell like refrigeration and citrus from the loading dock. The service stair's bare bulb flickers on the second landing. Needs replacing. I note it, keep climbing.
At the top landing, I turn toward the apartment door, and push it open.
I stop at the threshold.
Daphne stands near the back wall, framed by the bed and the oak desk. Her back is mostly to me, the line of her spine visible beneath a sweep of tangled hair. One hand steadies a plastic palette on the desk's edge; the other holds a narrow brush, which she uses to finish a stroke on her hip. The lamp I moved to herbedside pools gold light, and the evening sun slants through the south window.
She wears white cotton panties. Nothing else.
My cock twitches inside my jeans, thickening and thickening as I trace the lines of paint across her skin, her shoulders, her thighs. Bougainvillea and leaves spiral across her body in botanical lines. Pinks and greens, with shadows of ochre and black. A painted vine climbs her right calf, wraps the knee like a silk garter, and curls up her hip, where it dissolves into delicate blooms along her ribs. A spray of leaves and tiny thorns arcs across her chest and down the swell of one breast. On the back of her left hand, the heritage rose she painted days ago is dry and set, now nested in the larger composition.
I swallow hard, fighting back a groan. My cock feels ready to burst free. She hasn't noticed me yet—her dark hair is pulled back, revealing the curve of her neck as she leans over the desk. The wet brush moves in slow, deliberate circles, pink paint glistening in each stroke.
My eyes track to the source. Above the bed hangs the bougainvillea painting, my trophy from her father. The same flowers. The same dispersal across pale ground. She's been studying the painting for two weeks. Now it covers her body.
Thirty seconds pass. I don't move. Don't close the door. Don't speak.
I'm twelve paces away, and I see everything: the tremor in her hand as she dabs the paint, the way her calf muscle flexes when she shifts her weight, the faint pinkness where she's wiped away a mistake. The lamp does her no favors, highlighting every flaw in the paint, every uneven patch on her skin. But the sum of it is staggering.
My painting walked down the wall and put itself on her skin.
I stay frozen. I don't want to startle her. My breath hitches in my chest. All I feel is hot lust and the ache of skin pressing skin.I imagine running my fingers across the painted lines, smearing pink and green until it's a muddled riot. I dream of pressing my hard cock between her thighs, slipping it into that slick, aching pussy, fucking her slow and deep until her body trembles in my arms.
But I hold still. I will myself into control.
Minutes tick by. She finishes that last tiny bloom at her hip, sets the brush down with a soft click, and straightens her spine. Her shoulder blades flex under the paint. She inhales slowly.
Then she lifts her head and meets my gaze.
She doesn't flinch. She doesn't cover her breasts. Instead, she stands perfectly still, chin tilted up, daring me to break the silence. Her eyes are black pools in this light—neither inviting nor warning, just steady.
My heart hammers. My cock pulses painfully inside my jeans. I want to step across the threshold, to run my hands along every painted vine, to fuck the art off her body.
But I remain planted in the doorway, waiting for her to make the next move.
She walks to the desk, where her phone waits. The phone I returned to her, minus the sim card, days ago. The movement is controlled, a dancer's walk, all her joints aligned, no wasted motion. She presses the screen and music starts: not pop, not classical, but something in between—minor chords and a metronome pulse, like a ballet score gone feral.
She moves her body into the open floor, lamp at her back, hair wild around her shoulders, and she begins to dance.
She starts slow. Controlled extensions, weight shifting through her core, arms tracing shapes that make the painted vine seem alive. The lamp light catches pink blooms as she rotates. Green leaves shadow and brighten with each gesture. The floorboards creak under her weight shifts. Her breath comesin soft exhales with each extension. My hand tightens on the doorknob.
For three minutes I watch, frozen, hand still on the doorknob behind me, feet refusing to enter fully or retreat.
In the first minute, I see the outline of her training. The postures, the transitions, the way she can balance on a single foot with her other leg extended behind. I read the lines of her muscles, the intention in her core. Every roll of her shoulder or bend of her wrist says: I own this body, and I will decide what it's for. Her small breasts rise and fall with each extension, her legs float, and I feel my cock thicken as my gaze moves over her from head to toe.
In the second minute, the operational reading collapses. My mind blanks. There's only the heat under my skin, the sense of something not quite pain, more like hunger. She's here, moving for me, choosing me as her audience, and my cock pulses at the thought. The lamp makes her skin glow. The music pulls something from her body that wrap skirts and teaching voices never touched. She is both exposed and invincible, and I can't reconcile it with the other women I've known—who flinched, who looked away, who made me pay to touch them, to see them. She's not giving herself to me. She's not giving herself to anyone. She's taking something for herself, and letting me witness it.
By the third minute, I feel it in my chest. The wound I keep hidden, knotted up since discharge, since the last time I let anyone see me without the armor. My eyes burn. My fingers tremble. But here I am wanting. Needing. I want to cross the room and touch her, to paint her myself, to make her mine. But I won't step forward, because I know exactly what it costs her to move like this. I won't take what isn't given.
She stops moving. The music continues, but she stands in the center of the room, chest heaving, sweat darkening the small of her back. The painted petals shimmer, some of the fresh worksmudged by her own skin. She looks at me, slower this time, with a question in her eyes: Will you see me, or will you turn away?
I turn away. The discipline snaps back into place, as if the past three minutes never happened. I start to close the door behind me, to retreat into the hallway and let her have her moment alone.
But before the door can latch, she's there. She moves across the room faster than I would have expected, silent, and slams the door with her palm.
Her hand closes around my forearm.
The contact stops everything. Her painted hand on my bare forearm where the sleeve is pushed up. The rose on the back dry and set. Fresh bougainvillea pigment wet on her palm and fingers. Skin to skin. The first deliberate contact between us.
